The Dark Flower eBook

He breakfasted alone in the room where they had danced.
There were two letters for him. One from his
guardian enclosing money, and complaining of the shyness
of the trout; the other from his sister. The
man she was engaged to—­he was a budding
diplomat, attached to the Embassy at Rome—­was
afraid that his leave was going to be curtailed.
They would have to be married at once. They
might even have to get a special licence. It
was lucky Mark was coming back so soon. They
simply must have him for best man. The only
bridesmaid now would be Sylvia. . . . Sylvia
Doone? Why, she was only a kid! And the
memory of a little girl in a very short holland frock,
with flaxen hair, pretty blue eyes, and a face so
fair that you could almost see through it, came up
before him. But that, of course, was six years
ago; she would not still be in a frock that showed
her knees, or wear beads, or be afraid of bulls that
were never there. It was stupid being best man—­they
might have got some decent chap! And then he
forgot all—­for there was she, out
on the terrace. In his rush to join her he passed
several of the ‘English Grundys,’ who
stared at him askance. Indeed, his conduct of
the night before might well have upset them.
An Oxford man, fainting in an hotel! Something
wrong there! . . .

And then, when he reached her, he did find courage.

“Was it really moonlight?”

“All moonlight.”

“But it was warm!”

And, when she did not answer that, he had within him
just the same light, intoxicated feeling as after
he had won a race at school.

But now came a dreadful blow. His tutor’s
old guide had suddenly turned up, after a climb with
a party of Germans. The war-horse had been aroused
in Stormer. He wished to start that afternoon
for a certain hut, and go up a certain peak at dawn
next day. But Lennan was not to go. Why
not? Because of last night’s faint; and
because, forsooth, he was not some stupid thing they
called ’an expert.’ As if—!
Where she could go he could! This was to treat
him like a child. Of course he could go up this
rotten mountain. It was because she did not care
enough to take him! She did not think him man
enough! Did she think that he could not climb
what—­ her husband—­could?
And if it were dangerous she ought not to be
going, leaving him behind—­that was simply
cruel! But she only smiled, and he flung away
from her, not having seen that all this grief of his
only made her happy.

And that afternoon they went off without him.
What deep, dark thoughts he had then! What
passionate hatred of his own youth! What schemes
he wove, by which she might come back, and find him
gone-up some mountain far more dangerous and fatiguing!
If people did not think him fit to climb with, he
would climb by himself. That, anyway, everyone
admitted, was dangerous. And it would be her
fault. She would be sorry then. He would